Monday, September 28, 2015

Rhode Island PBS closes out the month of September with a special presentation of Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy on Great Performances Wednesday, September 30 at 8 p.m.

From the website:

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy – narrated by Joel Grey — explores the unique role of Jewish composers and lyricists in the creation of the modern American musical. Featuring interviews and conversations with some of the greatest composers and writers of the Broadway stage, Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacyshowcases the work of some of the nation’s pre-eminent creators of musical theatre including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Kurt Weill, Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Jule Styne and many others.

Though these remarkable songwriters were purveyors of what we think of today as the Broadway sound, the documentary demonstrates how there were echoes of Jewish strains in many of the works. From “Yiddishkeit” (all things Jewish) on the stages of the Lower East Side at the turn of the century to a wide range of shows including Porgy and Bess, West Side Story and Cabaret, the film explores how Jewish music and ethos informs many of America’s favorite musicals.

The film is the first of its kind to examine the phenomenon that, over the 50-year period of its development, the songs of the Broadway musical were created almost exclusively by Jewish Americans. These are the popular songs that our nation took to war, sang to their children at bedtime, and whistled while waiting for the bus; taken in total they comprise the vast majority of what is now commonly referred to as “The American Songbook.”

As historian Phil Furia cites as just one vivid example, Irving Berlin had so assimilated that he went on to “write the most popular Christmas song, ‘White Christmas’…and the most popular Easter song, ‘Easter Parade.’ It’s the Horatio Alger story told in Yiddish.” Berlin’s “God Bless America” became so popular, it nearly replaced the National Anthem.

While Jewish Americans certainly abounded in other areas of the musical theater, their predominance in the area of songwriting was nearly complete, with only the Episcopalian Cole Porter represented as a major figure in the pantheon of America’s greatest composers of Broadway songs. And even Porter, after three Broadway flops, finally ascertained the surefire way to success: “I’m going to write Jewish tunes.” As Andrew Lippa, the composer/lyricist ofTheAddams Family, points out in the film, “Porgy and Bessand Show Boat and Oklahoma! These are ideas that are fictions. What do we make America into? How do we take what we know and make it into America?”

Rare clips include Irving Berlin singing “God Bless America,” rehearsals for Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy, and original South Pacific star William Tabbert singing “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” with Richard Rodgers at the piano.

The film was produced, written, and directed by Michael Kantor, whose Broadway: The American Musical series was originally viewed by an estimated 15 million people, and won the 2005 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

WSBE Learn transmits over the air on digital 36.2; in Rhode Island on Cox 808; Verizon FiOS 478; Full Channel 89; and in Massachusetts on Comcast 294 or 312.

Can't get to the TV? Watch the episode online anytime and anywhere on our YouTube channel. Episodes of A Lively Experimentare generally available to watch on the next business day.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and YouTube will notify you when a new episode is uploaded.

American
Graduate Day 2015 returns this fall for its fourth consecutive
year. Soledad O’Brien will host the all-day broadcast which premieres Saturday,
October 3 from 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. on WSBE Learn (over the air on digital 36.2; Cox 808, Verizon 478, and Full Channel 109 in RI; Comcast 294 or 312 in MA). Broadcast
and streamed live from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York
City, the annual multiplatform event is part of the public media initiative, American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen,
helping communities bolster graduation rates through the power and reach of local
public media stations. Featuring seven hours of national and local programming,
live interviews and performances, American Graduate Day 2015 will
celebrate the exceptional work of individuals and groups across the country who
are American
Graduate Champions: those helping local youth stay on track to college
and career successes.

American
Graduate Day 2015 will be anchored by “Stories of Champions,” a
series of 14 one-minute profile pieces scheduledto air every half-hour, which will spotlight individuals and
influential figures in local communities around the country who are
successfully keeping students on the path to graduation.

For the first time,
this year’s broadcast will feature seven mini-documentaries that highlight the
extraordinary work organizations are doing across the nation to help keep
students on the path to graduation and track to college.

Hosted
by Soledad O’Brien, award-winning journalist, American Graduate Day 2015
is set up around critical themes with the goal of inspiring citizens to connect
with their local public media station and local community organizations, and
get involved as American Graduate Champions in helping the youth of their
community succeed.

Viewers and online users who are interested in connecting with local
organizations and youth as American Graduate Champions can send
a text on the day of broadcast or log on to AmericanGraduate.orgto find out more about the national and regional
organizations and how to help in their hometowns. Viewers will also be
invited to participate in the discussion via Twitterusing the #AmGrad hashtag and on Facebook.

American Graduate Day is part of American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen
– a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting to help communities implement solutions to the high school dropout
crisis. Additional funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Visit the
American
Graduate Web site for more details on participating PBS stations as
well as other television and radio programs:www.americangraduate.org

Monday, September 21, 2015

Downton Abbey on Masterpiece, Great Performances at The Met, Doc Martin, Antiques Roadshow. These and so many other national and local programs you and fellow public television viewers love to watch day after day, week after week on WSBE Rhode Island PBS are supported by donations from you and viewers like you.

Large or small, one-time or recurring, individual donations are the largest source of support for Rhode Island PBS. Every year, the station hosts a variety of fund raising events to boost support opportunities and to offer fun and rewards to viewers for their loyal support. Among the favorite events each year is the annual Benefit Auction, which, for the past 15 years, has featured a vehicle donated by your New England Toyota Dealers.

The Rhode Island PBS Benefit Auction also features three works of original art. Make a bold statement by choosing one or more of these pieces for home or office. Two are framed oil on canvas, signed and dated by artist John Eyre (1935-2007). One measures 38” x 38” and features purples, blues, black and white. The brilliant colors and extra large size of 50” x 74” of the second Eyre work make it an excellent choice for display in a company lobby or hung in a home with high ceilings. The third artwork is untitled and unsigned mixed media encaustic wax and oil on a 48” x 48” panel.

And if the sea is calling and you’re looking for a great winter project while you wait for next summer, set your heart and your sights on restoring a vintage 1967 O’Day Rhodes 19. The sea-worthy vessel includes mainsail and jib, plus LoadRite trailer.

You are invited to call us and come to the Rhode Island PBS studios between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday before the auction closes to inspect the artwork or the sail boat up close before you bid.

The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements is an exciting series about one of the great adventures in the history of science: the long and continuing quest to understand what the world is made of. Three episodes tell the story of seven of history’s most important scientists as they seek to identify, understand and organize the basic building blocks of matter. Rhode Island PBS presents The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements on Mondays at 9 beginning September 21 (September 28 and October 5).

The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements shows us not only what these scientific explorers discovered but also how, using actors to reveal the creative process through the scientists’ own words and conveying their landmark discoveries through re-enactments shot with replicas of their original lab equipment. Knitting these strands together is host Michael Emerson, a two-time Emmy Award-winning actor.

The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements brings the history of science to life for today’s television audience.

About the Episodes

Episode 1: Out of Thin Air (1754-1806) One of science’s great odd couples — British minister Joseph Priestley and French tax administrator Antoine Lavoisier — together discover a fantastic new gas called oxygen, overturning the reigning theory of chemistry and triggering a worldwide search for new elements. Soon caught up in the hunt is science’s first great showman, a precocious British chemist named Humphry Davy, who dazzles London audiences with his lectures, introduces them to laughing gas and turns the battery into a powerful tool in the search for new elements.

Episode 2: Unruly Elements (1859-1902) Over a single weekend in 1869, a young Russian chemistry professor named Dmitri Mendeleev invents the Periodic Table, bringing order to the growing gaggle of elements. But this sense of order is shattered when a Polish graduate student named Marie Sklodowska Curie discovers radioactivity, revealing that elements can change identities — and that atoms must have undiscovered parts inside them.

Episode 3: Into the Atom (1910-1960)
Caught up in the race to discover the atom’s internal parts — and learn how they fit together — a young British physicist, Harry Moseley, uses newly discovered X-rays to put the Periodic Table in a whole new light. And a young American chemist named Glenn Seaborg creates a new element — plutonium — that changes the world forever, unleashing a force of unimaginable destructive power: the atomic bomb.

The director of this project is Marta V. Martínez, independent oral historian and member of the Rhode Island PBS Community Advisory Board. First begun some years ago, the latest chapter of this project of Nuestras Raíces (Our Roots) continued in the Rhode Island PBS studios during August 2015, when members of the Rhode Island Latino community were filmed telling their stories of coming to America and arriving in Rhode Island.

The vignettes - short stories combining video, photos, and other archival documents and letters - feature interviews with Luis Aponte, Sandra Cano, José González, Roberto González, Carlos López Estrada, Miriam Gorriaran, Patricia Martínez, and Lydia Pérez, all of whom have contributed to and helped shape Latino history in Rhode Island over the past 60 years. Produced and edited by Marta Martinez in partnership with Rhode Island PBS, the eight vignettes will air throughout October as part of Hispanic Heritage Month and beyond.

Broadcast of the vignettes also coincides with the Rhode Island PBS encore of the six-part PBS series Latino Americans: 500 Years of History. Rhode Island PBS will air two episodes per week for three consecutive weeks, beginning Thursday, October 1 at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Latino Americans: 500 Years of History is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape North America over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S. The changing and yet repeating context of American history provides a backdrop for the drama of individual lives. It is a story of immigration and redemption, of anguish and celebration, of the gradual construction of a new American identity that connects and empowers millions of people today.

Friday, September 18, 2015

While we enjoy the beautiful weather forecast for this final weekend of summer, it is hurricane season. This weekend, we mark the anniversary of one of the bad ones. In 1938, years before weather services began naming hurricanes, one fast-moving storm careened up the east coast with devastating consequences. It's known plainly and simply as the Hurricane of '38, but its effects were anything but plain or simple - and its scars are still visible on buildings in downtown Providence.

In 1973, WSBE (then "Channel 36" now "Rhode Island PBS") made a commemorative documentary about the storm, using archival footage and interviews with survivors. The dramatic story won an Emmy Award for WSBE.

Rhode Island PBS proudly presents our award-winning documentary, Wake of '38 on Saturday, September 19 at noon, as well as Sunday, September 20, 2014 at 6 p.m. and Saturday September 26 at 11 p.m., as part of our ongoing series Rhode Island Stories, a collection of local documentaries about the people, places and events with a strong local connection on WSBE Rhode Island PBS. The film also airs on WSBE Learn on Tuesday, September 22 at 8:00 p.m.

An annual "fan favorite" among our viewers, the film marks 77 years since the devastating hurricane and 37 years since the WSBE Rhode Island PBS production premiered.

In her new role, Ms. Hall will steward a comprehensive
strategic fund raising plan, with an emphasis on cultivating major and planned
gifts, to support the mission and goals of WSBE Rhode Island PBS.

"I'm happy to welcome Debby to senior management. As a
valued member of the development team for more than four years, she has
demonstrated consistent commitment to Rhode Island PBS and our mission to serve
the community. Her knowledge of philanthropy and her ability to lead by example
make her a persuasive advocate and effective leader for local public
broadcasting."

Ms. Hall joined Rhode Island PBS in 2011 as an underwriting
account executive. She was promoted to Director of Corporate Relations in
2012. Before joining Rhode Island PBS, Ms. Hall operated a scheduling
business serving the financial services industry, and was Vice President, Key
Account Manager at Putnam Mutual Funds in Boston. A resident of
Barrington, Ms. Hall graduated cum laude from Tufts University.

Debra Hall can be contacted by telephone at 401-222-3636,
extension 339, or by email at dhall at ripbs.org.

WSBE Rhode Island PBS is
operated by the Rhode Island PBS Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)(3)
organization. WSBE Rhode Island PBS is a viewer-supported member of the PBS
network of public broadcasting stations, and uses the power of noncommercial
media to educate, engage, enrich, inspire, and entertain viewers of all ages in
Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, and eastern Connecticut since 1967.
WSBE-TV delivers content on three channels: Rhode Island PBS (digital 36.1),
Learn (digital 36.2), and Spanish-language content on Vme (36.3). For more
information about programs and education services at WSBE, visit www.ripbs.org.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Emmy-award winning filmmaker Jan Nickman has created Echoes of Creation as a unique visual and aural experience. Echoes of Creation was filmed in some of the most spectacular and often inaccessible locations of Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and California's Sequoia National Park, allowing viewers to feel the mystery of an aurora borealis, and hear the wisdom of three-thousand year old sequoias.

Featuring a soundtrack by Grammy nominated composer David Arkenstone and poetic spoken word by Karen Hutton, Echoes of Creation employsdirector Jan Nickman's pioneering Music-to-Picture technique, giving viewers a new experience with each viewing - in much the same way as music is enjoyed repeatedly.
Experience the miracle, marvel and wonder of the natural world and our deep connection to it on
Monday, September 14 at 10 p.m.

WSBE Learn transmits over the air on digital 36.2; in Rhode Island on Cox 808; Verizon FiOS 478; Full Channel 89; and in Massachusetts on Comcast 294 or 312.

Can't get to the TV? Watch the episode online anytime and anywhere on our YouTube channel. Episodes of A Lively Experimentare generally available to watch on the next business day.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and YouTube will notify you when a new episode is uploaded.

Hosted by actress-singer Cheryl Ladd (“Charlie’s Angels”), 60s and 70s SLOW SONGS (MY MUSIC) is a romantic retrospective of the love songs that ruled radio airplay and warmed listeners’ hearts during an otherwise tumultuous time in history. Serving as a welcome respite from the trauma of the Vietnam War, riots, and reforms that shook the nation, this MY MUSIC special features the classics that appeal to pop music lovers of all ages.

Return to the glorious days of legendary orchestras, bandleaders and singers that ruled America’s radio waves and dance halls, bringing joy and escape during the days the country went to war and through the era of victory that followed. Featuring songs from Perry Como, Doris Day, Benny Goodman, Tex Beneke, Peggy Lee, The Mills Brothers and more, STARLIGHT BALLROOM (MY MUSIC) is part of special fund raising content airing Wednesday, September 9 at 8 p.m.

After its phenomenally popular “Big Band Years” program, TJL Productions presents this program that revisits the swing era, a time when ballrooms across the United States hosted the biggest bands in the country as they travelled from city to city with dance numbers and beautiful ballads. These timeless sounds are enjoyed once again through long-unseen vintage film and television performances.